Cisco launched its Nexus® 9500 series of data center modular switches, which Cisco promises offers not only the highest port density of 10/40/100GbE, and the most programmable and fastest packet forwarding modular data center switch in the industry, but the most power efficient too. To verify and measure the power efficiency claim, Cisco engaged the Lippis/Ixia team to test the new Nexus® 9508 modular data center switch for power draw at scale. We found that the Nexus® 9508 sets a new record in data center modular switch power efficiency drawing some 3.85Watts per 10GbE port at a scale of 1,152-10GbE ports populated in a single chassis.

The definition of Software-Defined Networking being the separation of data and control plane offered little to DevOps professionals or network engineers seeking a programming environment to customize their network and automate opera¬tional tasks. With the introduction of the Nexus® 9000, Cisco is offering the most compre¬hensive set of network programming options that delivers programming tools through an enhanced version of the Nexus Operating System (or NX-OS), which ranges from direct switch programming via its built-in Linux BASH environment, open RESTful APIs with JSON and XML support, direct integration with Python, etc. Most network engineers will opt to enroll in a Linux programming course versus obtaining another CCIE certification after reading this Lippis Report Research Note. In this research note, we review Cisco’s new programming environment detailing its options, use cases and industry impact.